I wrote a book
I wrote a book. I wrote a book. I wrote a book. I wrote a book. I wrote a fucking book. I wrote a book. I wrote a book. I. WROTE. A. BOOK. Okay, now that I've fully processed that - I have finished the Growing Around novel. The first one, anyway. Simply titled Growing Around. I still need to do have a professional edit done, but the actual work of structuring everything is completely done. More or less, "it's as good as I can possibly get it on my own." Although that's never true. You can keep rewriting and reworking things forever if you really want to. And sometimes you've just got to let go and move onto the next project. (Although I am taking a few months off from writing novels, at least). I started writing this novel, according to google docs on April 30th. I set my deadline for its full completion on November 1st. I finished on October 25th. I've finally managed to see something to the end. Sort of. It's technically not done. This book is definitely going to be the first in a series. The first draft was 62,000 words. Children's novels have word counts that vary wildly. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is 76,000 words. Any Goosebumps novel is around 10,000 words. The Hobbit is 95,000 words. And The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was 36,000 words. I had a lot of leeway, but in the second draft, I was adding more details and so I made the choice to cut the book into two. The second draft had a word count of 42,000 words. And the third draft has a word count of 36,000. I have written a total of 140,000 words between all drafts, not counting portions that I outright deleted and removed because I wasn't happy with them even being a first draft. If my worry of "the book being too long" seemed absurd, this goes to chapter 9 out of 25 from the original draft. I had to make some painful cuts on top of that. Some parts of the story that I really enjoyed were either unnecessary or redundant. Here's what I'm writing on the back of the book. What do you think about it?: "Sally Dunn is a good kid. When she goes shopping, she buys the right toys that she thinks will make her whole family happy. When she goes driving, she tries her best to not bump the other kids too hard. She respects everyone else’s choice of pets, whether they be a little tiny dog or a huge elephant. And when her parents get home from school, she makes sure that her parents actually do their homework. All of this becomes difficult however, when Sally Dunn is forced into Party Duty and must balance her daily life while preparing for a party big enough for the entire town. That doesn’t sound too hard, but it seems like even the mayor has it out for her in this enticing slice of life adventure in the world where the people are Growing Around." There's only a few other things I'm able to do left, and the book will be able to sink or swim under it's own merits. I'm still looking for beta readers. If someone has been a help to me in the past, drop me a line and I'll give you a link. I need to know that you'll keep the access to this a secret. Keep in mind that the final draft is MUCH different than the original, in quality and in content. Category:Miscellaneous